Tag: CCAR Convention

Categories
Convention

Planning for CCAR Convention 2019 in Cincinnati

Initial planning and brainstorming for a CCAR convention begins 18 months prior to a convention, when the convention committee gathers in the city where the convention is set to take place. When members of the 2019 CCAR Convention Committee gathered in the Queen City and the home of Graeter’s Ice Cream in the fall of 2017, we gathered with excitement because of the prospect of celebrating two significant milestones – Isaac Mayer Wise’s 200th birthday and the 130th anniversary of the CCAR.

A Convention site visit is filled with opportunities to meet with local colleagues and local community leaders as we work to brainstorm the high level learning experiences that we all expect from our annual rabbinic gathering. What would make 2019 in Cincinnati unique? Learning at HUC, prayer at Plum St. and a celebration of our founder, Isaac Mayer Wise, would be memorable moments, but what would the enduring impact be of our learning together? To help us frame our thinking and planning, we reached our to our colleagues, Gary Zola and Jonathan Cohen (former Dean of the HUC’s Cincinnati campus) to teach us about Isaac Mayer Wise and his legacies. Not only did we discover that few of us knew much about his life, aside from founding the major institutions of our movement and his work on Minhag America, but thanks to the wisdom of our wonderful teaches we uncovered Wise’s legacies that we would use as a starting point for our learning goals that helps guide our planning for convention.

Rabbis Zola and Cohen taught us that among Wise’s many contributions to Jewish life in America, four significant legacies include: liturgical innovation, educational expansion, equality of women, and the Americanization of Judaism.

Using these lessons as a guide we created the following five goals:

  1. Build upon the legacy of Isaac Mayer Wise: Where were we? Where are we? Where are we going?: We will explore the following aspects – integration of Judaism into America, the training and education of rabbis, modern understandings of Jewish text and literature and how they apply to contemporary issues, liturgical innovation, Jewish education of adults and children, equality of women and social justice issues.
  2. We will reflect on Mission Driven Transformation:

Isaac Mayer Wise wanted to create an American Rabbinate to lead and serve the emerging Jewish community and to teach Jews who knew how to be Jewish to also be Americans. Today we are in the midst of unique opportunities to engage with Jews who know how to be American but need rabbinic leadership to help them create and live a meaningful Jewish life.

  1. To discover how Cincinnati is a microcosm for some of the challenges we are facing in the rest of the country and its approaches to meet those challenges.
  2. To think deeply about the role Reform Judaism plays in Jewish life in North America and the world.
  3. To mark sacred transitions within the CCAR.

Using these goals as our guide, we will have opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations about innovation. We will engage in study with our esteemed HUC faculty who will respond to key questions and challenges we face in our rabbinate. We will learn to lift up our moral voice and enhance moral leadership as we frame our social justice efforts in Jewish teachings and values. Finally, we will have a special opportunity to have an update from the Task Force on the Women’s Experience in the Rabbinate.

We hope that you will plan to join with colleagues as we reconnect with friends, broaden our rabbinic skills, enhance our rabbinates and celebrate the leadership of Steve Fox and Hara Person. We look forward to seeing you in Cincinnati and enjoying a cup of Graeter’s Black Raspberry chip together. Please register for CCAR Convention at https://www.ccarnet.org/member-services/convention/

—

Rabbi Rick Kellner serves Congregation Beth Tikvah in Columbus, Ohio.  He is also the Chair of the 2019 CCAR Convention Committee. 

Categories
News

CCAR 2017 Convention: “We Need Some Midwives Right Now!”

There’s a saying attributed to Rabbi Elliot Kleinman that the weather at convention is always “72 and fluorescent” (I’d say it’s closer to 65—bring a sweater) because there is so little time to explore the city in which the conference is held.  But from the moment we got started this morning, I knew that this year was going to be different.

We are in a city with such a rich, varied, and complicated history.  So it made sense that we began our journey with an exploration of Atlanta’s historical landmarks, in an Etgar 36 tour called “The Long Arc of Civil Rights Through the Eyes of Jewish Atlanta.”

We began at the Pencil Factory, the site of a murder that was wrongly pinned on Jewish businessman Leo Frank, who was convicted and then lynched in 1915.  We visited the Naming Project, makers of the AIDS quilt. At both sites, we spoke about how easy it was for the “other” to be victimized, whether by acts of violence, in the case of the former, or by “shame, stigma, and silence” in the case of the latter.

The highlight of our visit was stopping by the grave of Dr. King and then attending worship services at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father had served as preachers. This morning, the preacher was Reverend Dr. Traci deVon Blackmon, who gave a passionate “drash” connecting the story of the Hebrew midwives in Egypt, which she called “Sheroes of the Exodus,” to our modern-day struggle for justice. (Full disclosure: I wrote my thesis on this story, so I geeked out pretty hard at this).

The Pharaoh’s command to the midwives to kill the Hebrew baby boys, she said, was one of the first recorded incidents of “racial profiling.” The Pharaoh, not realizing the contributions that the Hebrews had made to his nation in the past, demonized the Hebrews and tried to break them. “Only fearful leaders create oppressive policies,” Reverend Blackmon said, “but often the thing that was meant to break you is what makes you stronger.”

The midwives would not be broken, and they would not do the acts of violence that Pharaoh asked of them, because they feared God, and “when you fear God, there are some things you just won’t do.” Reverend Blackmon also gave an interesting interpretation that the reason the midwives told Pharaoh that they missed the births of the Hebrew women was not because they were lying, but because they would spend that time praying, so that they could determine what God wanted them to do.

“It’s decision time,” Reverend Blackmon said. Like the midwives, she said, we have to decide whom we are going to serve, because, “It doesn’t matter who is in office, as long as God is on the throne!”

Reverend Blackmon then went through a long list of people she considered “midwives for justice”: Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Congressman John Lewis, and members of the church itself. She urged the congregation to join their ranks, saying, “We need some midwives right now!”

The theme of this year’s conference is, “Being a Rabbi in Turbulent Times,” and will feature conversations about social justice and professional ethics. Reverend Blackmon’s words helped us to ground our own pursuit of justice in the story of the Exodus, and asked us to consider who it is we serve, what it is we will (or won’t) do, and how we will be partners in bringing life into the world.

—

Rabbi Leah Berkowitz serves Vassar Temple in Poughkeepsie, NY .

Categories
Convention

What I’ve Learned from 27 Years of CCAR Conventions

I remember my first CCAR convention vividly. It was 1991, the first year after my ordination. I was serving a congregation in Melbourne Australia, where there were fewer rabbis in the entire country than in my ordination class, and (at that time) no other women. The convention was in South Florida and my strongest memory is of a long afternoon by the pool with some of my classmates. I remember walking into a plenary knowing almost no one and feeling joy that I could retreat to the community of friends I knew best.

Fast forward many years. My rabbinic network is much larger. The WRN, regional kallot, several moves, my local rabbinic community, my work on CCAR conventions and the CCAR board have resulted in relationships I never imagined I would have. And one of the great blessings of my work as the CCAR Manager of Member Services has been the chance to meet and get to know even more of you.

And yet, there is still something about walking into a room full of rabbis at convention and thinking ahead to lunch and dinner that brings me back to the moment of entering my junior high cafeteria and feeling anxiety about finding a spot at a lunch table. That feeling that everyone must have “plans” and if I don’t make them I’ll be alone has never quite disappeared, despite my growing network. And asking to join even a good friend who has plans for dinner somehow makes me feel like a gate-crasher, despite being warmly welcomed.

In conversation with many of you, I have come to learn that I am not the only one who carries these feelings walking into convention. These feelings persist despite the great strides that the CCAR has made in nurturing a culture that truly embraces a desire to facilitate relationships. And over the years since my first convention in 1991 I have seen these changes. When I walk into an elevator, people look me in the eye and greet me. When I sit down in a plenary or workshop, the people sitting next to me introduce themselves and begin conversation. Programs deliberately work to create opportunities for meaningful dialogue not just with the friends that surround us, but with those whom we do not yet know. CCAR board members offer opportunities to members to go out to dinner together; these are sincere offers, reflecting a true desire to meet and get to know the members they serve.

The CCAR, however, is both an organization and a group made up of individuals.  We have to ask ourselves what our role is in helping to create an environment in which no one feels alone in a crowd. We can ask “What kind of work do you do?” instead of “How large is your congregation?” Put down the phone when someone sits next to us and after the introductions, consider asking, “What are you working on that excites you?” “How are you being impacted by the current political climate?” “What do you like to do outside of your work?”  If you go to the bar late at night and see someone walk in alone, ask them to join you.

I know that this feels artificial, like a youth group mixer.  And many of us are cynical about the impact of these efforts. As a congregational rabbi, I image that this is how members of my congregation feel when I encourage them not to just talk to their friends at the Oneg Shabbat, to go up to the individual standing alone near the door, who may be having the junior high school flash back. But there are really only two choices:  working to break down barriers, or being at least partially responsible for the loneliness that persists amongst those who are supposed to understand us best.

We’re all familiar with the response of the Israelites at Sinai – na’aseh v’nishmah (Exodus 19:8).  Let’s overcome our cynicism, shift our comfort zone and reach out with open hearts; the meaning and understanding of these actions will unfold and shape us for years to come.

—

Betsy Torop is the CCAR Manager of Member Services and a congregational rabbi in Brandon, Florida.

Categories
CCAR Convention General CCAR News Reform Judaism Social Justice

Join Rabbis Organizing Rabbis at CCAR Convention

“Who knows whether you have come to your position for such a time as this?”

Last week we told the story of Mordechai calling Esther to action for her people just days before our country commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama. We honored Esther and Mordechai, who risked their lives to rid their community of the injustice Haman intended to perpetrate, and then we honored Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Joshua Heschel, John Lewis and many others who risked their lives to rid our country of the injustice perpetuated by structural racial inequality.

Mordechai called Esther to approach Achashverosh. Rev. Dr. MLK Jr called clergy to join him in Selma. Today, a new, yet familiar, call is sounding. We hear it echoing in newspaper articles and protests all across our country. We hear it in the absence of indictments for police officers at whose hands black men and boys’ lives were lost. We hear it in the statistics comparing the number of black men under some form of correctional control (1.7 million) to the number of black men who were enslaved in 1850 (870,000). Those of us attending CCAR convention will hear it in the words of Rev. William Barber II, who launched the Moral Movement in his home state of North Carolina, during his keynote address. What are we called to do? In his speech in Selma this past Shabbat, President Obama said:

“If we want to honor the courage of those who marched that day, then all of us are called to possess their moral imagination. All of us will need to feel, as they did, the fierce urgency of now. All of us need to recognize, as they did, that change depends on our actions, on our attitudes, the things we teach our children. And if we make such an effort, no matter how hard it may sometimes seem, laws can be passed, and consciences can be stirred, and consensus can be built.”

I want to honor the courage of Queen Esther and those who marched in Selma 50 years ago. I want to respond to the cries of outrage about the racial and economic inequality that plagues America to this day – cries from others and from my own heart. I want to heal and transform the structural inequalities that break on race and class lines in this country. I want to join with rabbinic colleagues to exercise our moral imagination, feel the urgency of now, and take action together.

At CCAR Convention this coming week, Rabbis Organizing Rabbis will begin harnessing the power of the Reform rabbinate to deepen and develop relationships across lines of race, class and faith to dismantle racial and economic inequality. Join me at the ROR workshop on Tuesday, March 17 from 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. to discuss structural inequality – how we as rabbis are affected by it, how rabbis across the country are working on it in their communities, and how we might address it together. Because, perhaps, we have come to our positions for such a time as this.

This blog was originally posted on the RAC blog.